OWC or Obedient Wives Club – a joke or serious matter?

In today’s society, the place of a woman is no longer confined to the home and the kitchen. In fact, equality of the gender has since become a norm and it is now considered common that the female’s role in the society has become more important than before. Thus, when a new movement group called the ‘Obedient Wives Club’ or OWC in short emerged not long ago, the name of the group itself left much to be debated.

In all fairness, the OWC is out to call on Muslim women to keep their husbands happy and satisfied in order for a happy and harmonious family. Perhaps it is the manner by which the OWC put forth their beliefs and principles which raised some eyebrows. One of the major issues that the OWC has been reported to be talking about is on the married couple’s sex life.

One of the earlier interpretations by the OWC was that the wife should be able to satisfy their husbands like a ‘first class prostitute’ so that their husbands will not stray. While it might sound logical, it was the manner that it was proposed that sounded negative and perhaps detrimental. The OWC is aimed to teach women on how to please their husbands and this came in the wake of the increase of divorce rates in recent years.

The statistics which was reported by JAKIM (Islamic Development Department) showed that there were 27,119 divorce cases in 2009 and that constitutes to around 82% of the total divorces in Malaysia. Since its launch, the OWC has already expanded to other countries despite receiving a lot of negative publicity from the media. Some has claimed that OWC has used the religion issue to send their messages across and in this case, it claims that Islam stipulates that a woman must obey their husbands and hence, the name of the movement.